Open letter to Lone Rock Community Park Board

We, as taxpayers and residents of the Lone Rock Community Park District, are angered and appalled that our Lone Rock Community Park identity has been stripped and that our park is now named W.G. Leese Community Park. We now know how violated people feel when their identity is taken from them. The hope was when this land was sold from the late Donald Guenther and Cleo Guenther that it would be a legacy to our Lone Rock/Sunnyside community for generations to come. Our identity is our community name and when that is no longer there, it ceases to be known to others who we are as a community. Names are important to people, be it an individual or a community.
To recognize one individual for his work on this park is not a problem to any of us, but it should be done in a way that does not take the park identity from the community. A plaque or other form of honor would be a more appropriate way but that does not give anyone the right to take another’s name.
We, as voters, elect the Lone Rock Park Board members in good faith that they will always protect our rights as community members and this kind of decision betrays all of us. If, indeed, the name change is not rectified and given back to the Lone Rock Community Park then perhaps the Lone Rock community should begin its search for another piece of ground that will remain in our name and this park removed from the tax rolls.
The question is: Who gives any individual the right or privilege to erect a metal sign set in cement on property that does not belong to him but belongs to the community as a whole?Cleo GuentherStevensville